Talk of records that ought to be set in 2001 revolve around topics we know
well. Rickey Henderson ought to set the records for walks and runs
scored, barring some sort of blackballing scheme. Barry Bonds is
basically a lock to hit his 500th home run (six to go), and Sammy Sosa
his 400th (14 to go). On more trivial notes, a healthy season for the
first time in three years would get Cal Ripken Jr. to 3,000 games
played; Jesse Orosco will probably get into the 1,100th game of his
career.
All of those things are well and good, but breaking records belonging to
the dead Ty Cobb or the equally dead Babe Ruth aren’t exactly
drama. It isn’t like we’ll get a break from the action back to the cemetery
to see if either man is spinning in his grave. But there are records in
danger that feature live victims and able candidates.
Now keep in mind that I’ve always been fascinated by the unfortunate
Terry Felton, who pitched for the Twins from 1979 to 1982. Felton
owns an 0-16 career record, capped by an 0-13 run in his final season. The
New York media, in their infinite parochialism, got more caught up with
Anthony Young in the 1990s, but connoisseurs of the art of the loss
should never forget Felton. Young, after all, won a game or two, and has a
career record of 15-48 in the big leagues. (He also converted 20 of 28 save
opportunities, which tells you about all you need to know about the save.)
So with the memory of Omar Daal fresh in our minds, there are
accomplishments in the offing that need to be considered. We’re talking
about the same serious stuff that gets Brian Kingman frightened
every couple of years: pitchers who know how to lose. Consider the all-time
net loss leaders in baseball history:
Most net losses (L-W), all pitchers:
Name Net Losses Years StartsMilt Gaston 67 1924-1934 271 Si Johnson 64 1928-1947 272 John Healy 58 1885-1892 222 Jack Russell 56 1926-1940 182 Stump Wiedman 55 1880-1888 269 Bill Hart 54 1886-1901 190 Jack Fisher 53 1959-1969 265 Buster Brown 52 1905-1913 165 Bill Stearns 52 1871-1875 79 Jim Hughey 51 1891-1900 113
Okay, that’s basically a bunch of guys of whom most of us haven’t heard,
although I remember trading for Milt Gaston about 14 years ago in a
1930 Strat-O-Matic replay league. Gaston was a good pitcher who came up
with the Yankees in 1924, then had the misfortune of being traded for
Urban Shocker. He bounced from the Browns to the Senators to the Red
Sox and lastly the White Sox.
Si Johnson was occasionally pretty good too, but invariably for some
of the worst teams of the National League of the 1930s; after getting
nabbed as a stretch-drive pickup from the perennially sad-sack Reds, he got
to help the last flickering embers of the Gas House Gang recede from a
90-win level to fifth place. As soon as the Cardinals dumped him (and
manager Frankie Frisch), they won 92 games. Of course, in neither Gaston’s
case nor Johnson’s was it entirely the one guy’s fault, but you might say
these are the kinds of guys who can help make their own luck.
My sympathies for Gaston and Johnson aside, I’ll confess a flat-out bias: I
don’t hold a lot of faith in these pitchers’ ability to lose in the major
leagues, because other than Jack Fisher, all of them pitched before
the game was integrated. So what if we set the bar for pitchers who hurled
since 1947?
Most net losses (L-W), pitchers who pitched the bulk of their careers since
1947:
Name Net Losses Years StartsJack Fisher 53 1959-1969 265 Sid Hudson 48 1940-1954 279 Mike Morgan* 46 1978-2000 410 Pedro Ramos 43 1955-1970 268 Jesse Jefferson 42 1973-1981 144 Matt Young 40 1983-1993 163 Skip Lockwood 40 1969-1980 106
*active
This is a little more interesting. "Fat Jack" Fisher reigns
supreme, as you might expect given his role as a Mets’ rotation regular in
the low-scoring 1960s.
We also find another reason to remember how special Mike Morgan has
been. While some people are claiming the 300-game winner is going to go the
way of the dodo (even as Roger Clemens is 40 wins away, and Greg
Maddux 60), even today in the notional era of "dilution through
expansion," we just don’t have a generation of talented losers like
those of years gone by. Pitching in middle relief for the Snakes could get
Morgan that 0-7 record to match Jack Fisher in the modern era. It won’t be
easy, but I’m sure fans of the Giants, Dodgers, and Rockies will be pulling
for him. I don’t know if Fisher is still alive, but he probably is
considering he’d only be 61 years old. Nevertheless, I doubt that Jerry
Colangelo will fly him to games to potentially witness the moment.
That calls to mind the drama that we see in only a few Augusts these days:
the hunt for the baseball’s next 20-game loser. It’s Brian Kingman’s
claim to fame, and we can only imagine the tension as Kingman roots for a
great last month for guys like Omar Daal or Jose Lima. We’re
now into the 21st year since Kingman’s 1980 pinnacle of defeatitude, which
is a long time.
That sort of brings me back to Terry Felton’s blip of historical
significance as the pitcher with the most losses without a career win.
Happily or sadly, Felton’s 0-13 season in 1982 doesn’t even rank on the
list of 20th-century single-season net loss leaders:
Pitcher Year W L L-WHappy Townsend 1904 5 26 21 Ben Cantwell 1935 4 25 21 Kaiser Wilhelm 1905 3 23 20 Paul Derringer 1933 7 27 20 Jack Nabors 1916 1 20 19 Joe Harris 1906 2 21 19 Fred Glade 1905 6 25 19 Bob Groom 1909 7 26 19 Don Larsen 1954 3 21 18 Cliff Curtis 1910 6 24 18 Gus Dorner 1906 8 26 18 George Ferguson 1909 5 23 18 Beany Jacobson 1904 6 23 17 Harry McIntire 1905 8 25 17 Vic Willis 1905 12 29 17 Roger Craig 1963 5 22 17 Jose DeLeon 1985 2 19 17 Gus Bell 1910 10 27 17
The all-time champion is John Coleman in 1883 with a 12-48 record.
For all of the hoopla about Brian Kingman’s claim to fame, it’s been 15
years since Jose DeLeon notched the last season to make this list.
Considering only the guys who have pitched since integration, only
Don Larsen is ahead of DeLeon. Just as Terry
Felton has his little corner of history, it seems we ought to name each
season’s net loss-leader the winner of the DeLeon Award. After all, Larsen
is famous for something else he did on the mound, while Roger Craig has the
cachet of being an Amazin’ Met or the Humm Baby loser of the 1989 World
Series going for him. DeLeon only has a brief rash of beating Roger Clemens
head-to-head a couple of times while he was pitching for the White Sox;
even then, he probably takes a back seat to Dave Stewart for that fringe
category.
Clearly, we don’t see people losing like they used to, and that’s a shame.
Since a brief high-water mark in the early 1980s, when we were treated to
the stylings of Mike Morgan and Terry Felton and Jose DeLeon, we only have
the brief career of Anthony Young to cheer us up. Young had 33 net losses
in his career and holds a single-season low-water mark of 15 net losses in
1993. But until somebody else lowers his game so that he can get to 17 net
losses and enter this single-season pantheon, I’m happy with giving Jose
DeLeon some claim to fame and inventing the DeLeon Award for Major League
Baseball’s single-season loss leader.
(Data courtesy of Michael Wolverton and Keith Woolner.)
Chris Kahrl can be reached at ckahrl@baseballprospectus.com.
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